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For the past few years, there has been a lot of
discussion about taxing commerce conducted on the Internet (e-commerce).
There are a variety of opinions, conflicting estimates of how much tax
revenue is at stake, and a variety of solutions offered for taxing (or
not taxing) e-commerce.
The research task:
Using the Internet as your research tool, prepare a brief report that
explains what the current sales tax/e-commerce controversy is all about.
Be sure to find out the views of industry, individual taxpayers, and
government groups. Also find out what activities are currently underway
to study and, perhaps, take action on this issue (such as the U.S.
Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce). Your objective explanation
of this topic should be followed by a brief editorial expressing and
providing support for your views on whether sales of tangible goods to
consumers over the Internet should be subject to sales tax.
NOTE: Because this exercise is also intended to
improve your Internet research skills, you will be "walked
through" an approach to the above task. This "tour"
will provide you with tips and examples of where and how to search and
how to evaluate what you find. However, you will be asked questions
that are to be turned into your instructor. These questions are also
on a worksheet (pdf or word)
that you should
print now so that you can enter your answers on it as you take this
research tour. Throughout this tour, questions to be answered on your
worksheet are highlighted in orange.
Back to research topic
The steps listed below are not necessarily in any required
order. Instead, they are examples of approaches to finding the information
needed to complete your research task. Each step serves to illustrate a
research tip or technique that should prove helpful for most types of
information searches using the Internet. Also, because this
"tour" is designed to illustrate search techniques, repetitive
steps (such as reading all of the information at the sites you located) is
not included. You will need to do this to complete the above research
task. In addition to applying standard Internet search
"techniques" at each step, you will also need to apply the information
analysis techniques described earlier to the information you find.
Step 1:
State the question(s) for which you are seeking information.
Research Skills:
If you
don't have a good understanding of the research question, you will likely
waste time and not find useful information for completing the research
task.
-
What do industry groups, individual taxpayers, and
governments think about collecting sales tax on goods sold via
e-commerce?
-
What is the U.S. Advisory Commission on Electronic
Commerce (AC-EC)?
And, an underlying question seems to be:
Organizational
tip-
You might want to identify categories of information you are seeking
such that you can list the relevant URLs that you find within these
categories. This should prove helpful in organizing your research so
that you can then easily proceed to gathering the information from
each URL in an organized manner, as well as have the URL readily
available should you need to use it again. This step will also be
useful in helping you to prepare your bibliography and/or footnotes to
your report.
How
to organize your URLs: You might want to create folders (or
subfolders) in your browser for bookmarking the links that you find
for each category (general, government, industry, taxpayer, AC-EC, miscellaneous). Or, you might want to create a bibliography by
creating a word document or web page document and pasting the URLs
into the categories you have identified.
Step 2: Conduct
a broad search.
Research Skills:
This step will give you an idea of how much
information might be available, the types of information, and how you can
narrow the search, if necessary. Also, you should always use at least two
different search engines because they don't all have the same URLs
cataloged and they use differing approaches to finding and displaying the
information. In addition, you should try alternative search terms.
For example, broad searches for our topic could be "internet
tax" or "e-commerce tax" or "electronic commerce
tax." While there are many search engines in existence, in this
exercise, you will work with just a few, including ones that conduct
searches in other search engines.
TO DO - Using "internet tax" conduct a search
in (use the quotes):
http://www.google.com
http://www.search.com
(see Worksheet Question #1)
This search in Google produced some helpful
information (note that your search might not produce the same
information because new items may have been added or reordered). Some of
these sites (from the first 20 search results) are noted below with an
explanation as to why each might be useful.
-
Advisory
Committee on E-Commerce Taxation - refers to the Internet Tax
Freedom Act. It is not clear from the site whether the committee is
a private one or a government one.
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The
Internet Tax Fairness Coalition - "fairness" in the
tax context has a variety of meanings. This might be a
group advocating for wider application of taxes to e-commerce, or
just the opposite. Is there a link that says "about us" or
something similar that might get you a quick overview to the
coalition? Is there a listing of the members?
-
A few sites of various organizations.
-
A few articles.
Note: You will want to bookmark the sites you
find in this step that might be relevant to answering your research
question so that you can revisit them once you find your key research
sites. Click here for more
information.
Step 3:
Conduct a more focused search.
Research Skills:
While you still need to explore the
sites found in Step 2, you should see if a more narrow search will produce
more specific sites. Some search engines, such as Altavista and
Yahoo!, allow for "field searching." Field searching
allows you to better focus your search, and thereby obtain more relevant
results. Some search engines will allow you to search by title (the words
that appear at the top of the web page when viewed by your web browser),
date, domain, keywords, and pictures. You can learn more about field
searching by reading the help screens on search techniques provided by the
particular search engine you are using. In this example, we will conduct a
title search in Northern Light.
TO DO: Go to http://www.yahoo.com/
and enter the following in the search box:
title:e-commerce+tax
Search tip:
The + symbol is used to find documents with both e-commerce and tax
in the document, but not necessarily in sequence. This technique is
referred to as Boolean search. The commonly used Boolean connectors are
AND, OR, and NOT. In some search engines, such as Infoseek, + and - are
used in place of AND and OR. It is important to read the search
techniques page for any search engine you are using to find out what
search techniques are possible. [Boolean logic is named for mathematician George Boole
(1815-1864) who founded this symbolic logic system.]
Interestingly, this search produced different results
than was obtained with the general search. Some of the URLs that you will
want to review now or bookmark for further research include:
TO DO: The above search was narrow in only finding pages
with "e-commerce" and tax in the title. Since another way a
webmaster might describe information on this topic is "internet
tax," try this search in Northern Light.
title: "internet tax"
Search tip:
The quotation marks are used to tell the engine that you are looking
for the phrase "internet tax" and not these two words
separated (this is referred to as phrase searching). Not all search engines use quotation marks for this type of
search; be sure to read the information on searching provided by the
search engine sponsor.
Again, this search provided some URLs (at least in the
first 20 results) that were not produced earlier.
TO DO: Worksheet Question #2
- use a search engine, such as Google, to find articles on field searching and
explain another type of field that can be searched and how it would
benefit you in completing the internet tax research task. [A possible
search could be "field searching"]
Search engines also provide more focused results if the
special connectors and search techniques designed for the engine are
used. For an example of such techniques, review the special
features offered by Google.
Step 4:
Explore and critique the relevant sites found using the search engines.
Research Skills:
-
Application of information
analysis techniques to information found on the Internet.
-
Further practice with
specialized searches, such as backward searching.
At this step, you apply the information analysis
techniques explained earlier. In this tour, just a few of the sites
will be examined so as to illustrate application of the analysis
techniques. To complete your report, you would need to apply the
techniques to all of the internet sites you examine. Just as a reminder,
at each site (information source) consider:
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Who, What, Where, Why, and When.
-
Why not? Is there any reason why we should not rely on
the information? (This is a continuation of who, what, where, why and
when.)
-
What else? While there is a lot of information on the
Internet, not everything is there. You may need to visit the library.
Some information on the Internet is only available through paid
subscription. This is true of most tax data. The database may be
available at the library (either in paper, CD-ROM, or on the
Internet). Other sources of information include asking someone
knowledgeable about the topic.
Sample Analysis
Application to: http://catalogagemag.com/ecommerce/marketing_dma_uncollected_ecommerce/
What? This seems to be an article based on a
presentation by the DMA. The article says, "in a presentation
here," without stating where "here" is.
Who? It appears to be an article published by
Catalog Age magazine. This article is secondary source materials
which is useful for letting us know about a study, but it would be
better to find the primary authority - the data from the Direct
Marketing Association. You could try to find the DMA using the URL: http://www.dma.org.
If that doesn't work, use a search engine to find the Direct Marketing
Association.
What's missing? What is the source of the figures
that the DMA says are "vastly overstated?" This should also be
reviewed. It would also be good to look for other studies and
reports on the validity of the data.
TO DO: Worksheet Question #3
- select and examine a URL noted above, or one found on your own that is
related to the research topic. Explain the relevance of the site.
When? Some of the newspaper articles and
newsletter sites were from 1997 and 1998. While these may provide some
background information, you will also need to obtain more current
information since your research topic is about a very current event.
You will also want to check when the web pages you read
were last updated.
-
Credibility/Reliability/Accuracy
Why? In reviewing any web site, it is useful to
ask "why" the sponsor of the page created it. Is it to
provide text of factual information or is it expressing an opinion? Is
the site a disguised advertisement or other form of solicitation?
Several of the sites found in the general and narrow
searches above appear to be editorial in nature; that is, someone is
expressing an opinion. Such sites should be used carefully and not
mistakenly confused with objective data. Editorials should not be
ignored because they can help provide a broader context for the issue
you are researching. For example, why do some people oppose Internet
taxation and why do others support it? Do both groups define
"internet taxation" in similar ways? Do any facts seem to be
omitted or misrepresented? These sites may also include links to other
sites including ones with objective background information (such as
the text of the Internet Tax Freedom Act).
Example: http://www.free-market.net/spotlight/internettaxation/
The tone of the article seems to be an editorial (for
example, "hungrily eye"). Click on some of the links on the page,
including the "about" link, to obtain an overview of this
organization, which is a libertarian group.
Who and What? Another way to learn more about a
sponsor of a web page is to conduct a "backward search." A backward
search will tell you what web pages include a link or reference to
the web page you are examining. Several of the search engines, including
Northern Light, allow for backward searching. Benefits of backward searching
include:
-
Finding more web sites that may have useful
information.
-
Gaining a better understanding of the web site you
are searching by seeing what types of organizations, companies or
individuals have linked to it. Often, if a source you view as
reliable (such as a university or government agency) has included a
link to the page, it may have added credibility for you.
-
Finding connections that may not have been obvious.
For example, you may discover that a page with .org is related to a
particular person or organization not noted on the main page.
Example: At http://www.google.com/,
enter the following in the search box:
link:www.free-market.net
A review of some of the search results indicates that
some libertarian groups have included
links to the free-market site.
TO DO: Worksheet Question #4
- select a URL noted above, or found on your own that is related to the
research topic. Conduct a backward search of the URL and explain what
you learned from the exercise.
Why not and What else? In examining the URLs found in the broad
and narrow searches, the accuracy of the information provided must be
considered. Often, this is difficult because you might not be familiar
with the subject matter. For example, you might not know when, if ever,
sales tax is to be collected on a sale made by an Internet vendor. But,
common sense, can still help you in judging the accuracy and reliability
of a site. The examination of the web page (for example, looking for the
"about" link), and backwards searching can help.
In searching a controversial topic, you will need to ask
yourself where objective information might be obtained. Given that the
topic is taxes, perhaps the IRS or a state tax agency will have some
objective information. In addition, perhaps an accounting or law firm
may have objective information on the topic. Some methods for searching
for specific topical information from a specific company or organization
include:
-
Conduct a search using the organization's name and
the topic search term.
-
Go to the organization's web site and use its search
function (assuming it has one).
-
Use a search engine to conduct a "url
search" which should uncover the URLs of the organization. For
example, use http://www.dogpile.com/
and in the search box enter
url:kpmg.com
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Depth
In reviewing web pages, be sure to examine the depth
of the material. That is, is any background information or sources
provided? Is the page you found just a small portion of the content?
That is, is the web site primarily to serve another function? Are
links provided for other information?
Step 5:
Complete the research.
Research Skills:
-
Review of research
information to determine what is missing.
-
Search in periodicals,
government databases, and sites commonly used for the particular
topic that may have additional useful information to complete the
research.
Review all of the URLs you uncovered in the
broad and narrow searches, as well as those you found as links on these
pages and through the backward search, and any additional searches you
performed at Step 3. Analyze the informational value of each site to your
research needs. Ask yourself what might be missing. In addition, be sure to review relevant government sites, such as
the Treasury Department, the White House, Congress, the Joint Committee on
Taxation, and perhaps also sites of state tax agencies and legislatures. You can find links to many of these useful tax sites by clicking here.
Lastly, prepare your research report to complete your research task.
TO DO: Worksheet Question #5
- Review the following web sites to find information pertinent to your
research task. Explain what you found and comment on its relevance and
reliability.
Current event sources: A source of
information on current events are newspapers, many of which are
accessible via the Internet. Some of the newspapers charge a small
fee to retrieve older articles, but some are free. The
Business Journal is an example of a journal that allows for
retrieval of past articles for free, although registration is
required.
TO DO: Conduct a search in the Business
Journal for an article on internet tax.
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